Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Vietnam refuses to stamp new Chinese passport

AFP

HANOI — Vietnamese immigration officers said Tuesday they were
refusing to stamp entry visas into controversial new Chinese passports
which feature a map of Beijing's claim to almost all of the South China
Sea.

Vietnam has said the computer-chipped passports violate its sovereignty (AFP/File, Hoang Dinh Nam)

Vietnam has said the computer-chipped passports violate its
sovereignty and has demanded Beijing withdraw the documents, which show
the contested Paracel and Spratly Islands as Chinese territory.
"We
do not stamp the new Chinese passports," said an official at Hanoi's
Noi Bai Airport, the country's main international gateway.

"We issue them a separate visa," said the official, who did not want to be named.

A
border guard in northern Lang Son province said they were also not
stamping the new passports but issuing separate visas to Chinese
arrivals.

Even with the new passports, however, "Chinese citizens can still travel normally through the border gate," the guard added.

Chinese
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Tuesday that he was not aware
of Vietnam's refusal to stamp visas in China's new passports.

Beijing
has attempted to downplay the diplomatic fallout from the recently
introduced passports, with the foreign ministry arguing the maps were
"not made to target any specific country".

Microblog users in
China complained the immigration rules for the new passports were
causing inconvenience and delays on arrival.

"Immigration is
requesting a separate visa form. This is causing lots of trouble, and is
very time consuming," one user wrote on Weibo, China's version of
Twitter.

Beijing has long infuriated southern neighbours such as
Vietnam with its claim to vast swathes of the South China Sea, with
Chinese maps showing a "nine-dash line" that runs almost to the
Philippine and Malaysian coasts.

Both the Philippines and India have also protested against the map in Beijing's new biometric passports.
India
has started stamping its own map onto visas issued to Chinese visitors
as the map shows the disputed border areas of Arunachal Pradesh and
Aksai Chin as part of Chinese territory.

Manila, which claims part
of the Spratlys, sent Beijing a formal protest letter last week,
calling the maps "an excessive declaration of maritime space in
violation of international law".

The South China Sea is
strategically significant, home to some of the world's most important
shipping lanes and believed to be rich in resources.

Other claimants to parts of the South China Sea are Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan.